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Count of Monte Cristo 67

25:04 recording · EN · 3 speakers

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Brief overview

Villefort tells Madame Danglars their buried child's body is gone and may have survived.

  1. The grave was empty, not merely robbedVillefort dug the thicket twice, by lantern and by daylight, and found neither chest nor skeleton.
  2. The child may have been carried off aliveA napkin marked with half a baron's crown and the letter H matched Hermine's linen at the foundling hospital.
  3. Monte Cristo holds their twenty-year secretHe spoke of a disinterred child that could not be found, so Villefort gives himself one week to learn who he is.
Executive Summary AI
  • Madame Danglars leaves home at half-past twelve, dresses plainly, veils herself in a cab crossing the Pont Neuf to the Rue de Harlet, and is taken by a private passage to the procureur Villefort's office.
  • After bolting the door and closing the curtains, Villefort reveals that Monte Cristo, digging under the trees, found neither skeleton nor chest, because no child was buried there.
  • He recounts the night of the birth in the red damask room: the child seemed dead, he laid it in a chest, was stabbed in the garden by a Corsican, struggled three months with death at Versailles and took six months to recover at Marseilles.
  • He then describes paying off a tenant to annul a nine-year lease and digging the thicket over twenty feet square and two feet deep, by lantern and again at daylight, finding absolutely nothing.
  • At the foundling hospital he learned a child was brought on the night of the twentieth of September in half a linen napkin marked with half a baron's crown and the letter H, reclaimed six months later by a woman traced to Chalon and lost forever.
Key Quote
“Thanks, madame, thanks for your punctuality.”
— Villefort
Key Quote
“oh, it requires all my reason to convince me that I am not a very guilty woman and you a menacing judge.”
— Madame Danglars
Key Quote
“I feel that my place is not in the judge's seat, but on the prisoner's stool.”
— Villefort

Transcript

0:00 CHAPTER 67.
0:17 At the Office of the King's Attorney.
0:21 Let us leave the banker, driving his horses at their fullest speed and follow madame danglars in her morning excursion we have said that at half-past twelve o'clock madame danglars had ordered her horses and had left home in the carriage she directed her course toward the faubourg saint-germain the Rue Mazarin and stopped at the Passage du Pont Neuf. She descended and went through the passage.
0:47 She was very plainly dressed, as would be the case with a woman of taste walking in the morning.
0:53 At the Rue Gounigaud, she called a cab and directed the driver to go to the Rue de Harlet.
0:58 As soon as she was seated in the vehicle, she drew from her pocket a very thick black veil,
1:04 which she tied onto her straw bonnet.
1:06 She then replaced the bonnet and saw with pleasure, in a little pocket mirror, that her white
1:12 complexion and brilliant eyes were alone visible. The cab crossed the Pont Neuf and entered the
1:17 Rue de Harlet by the Place Dauphine. The driver was paid as the door opened, and stepping lightly
1:23 up the stairs, Madame d'Anglard soon reached the
1:26 salle de pas perdus. There was a great deal going on that morning, and many business-like persons
1:32 at the palais, business-like persons pay very little attention to women, and Madame d'Anglard
1:38 crossed the hall without exciting any more attention than any other woman calling upon her
1:42 lawyer. There was a great press of people in Monsieur de villefort's antechamber but madame danglars had no occasion even to pronounce her name
1:51 the instant she appeared the doorkeeper rose came to her and asked her whether she was not the person with whom the procureur had made an appointment and on her affirmative answer being given he conducted her by a private passage to Monsieur de Villefort's
2:05 office. The magistrate was seated in an armchair, writing, with his back towards the door. He did
2:12 not move as he heard it open, and the doorkeeper pronounced the words, Walk in, Madame, and then
2:17 reclose it. But no sooner had the man's footsteps ceased than he started up, drew the bolts,
2:23 closed the curtains, and examined every corner of the room. Then, when he started up, drew the bolts, closed the curtains, and examined every
2:25 corner of the room. Then, when he had assured himself that he could neither be seen nor heard,
2:31 and was consequently relieved of doubts, he said, Thanks, madame, thanks for your punctuality.
2:37 And he offered a chair to madame d'Anglard, which she accepted, for her heart beat so violently
2:41 that she felt nearly suffocated. It is a long time, madame, said the
2:46 procureur, describing a half-circle with his chair so as to place himself exactly opposite to madame
2:51 Denglar. It is a long time since I had the pleasure of speaking alone with you, and I regret that we
2:57 have only now met to enter upon a painful conversation. Nevertheless, sir, you see I have
3:03 answered your first appeal, although certainly the conversation must be much more painful for me than for you lefort smiled bitterly it is true then every step in our lives is like the course of an insect on the sands it leaves its track alas to many the path is traced by tears When I look at this room, whence so many guilty creatures have departed, trembling and ashamed,
3:46 when I look at that chair before which I now sit trembling and ashamed,
3:50 oh, it requires all my reason to convince me that I am not a very guilty woman and you a menacing judge.
3:57 Villefort dropped his head inside, and I, he said,
4:00 I feel that my place is not in the judge's seat, but on the prisoner's stool.
4:25 You, said Madame d'Anglard, yes, I. said i feel that my place is not in the judge's seat but on the prisoner's stool you said madame passions, and after all, what have you men to fear from all this? The world excuses and notoriety
4:32 ennobles you. Madame, replied Villefort, you know that I am no hypocrite, or at least that I never
4:40 deceive without a reason. If my brow be severe, it is because many misfortunes have clouded it.
4:46 If my heart be petrified, it is that it might sustain the blows it has received.
4:51 I was not so in my youth. I was not so on the night of the betrothal, when we were all seated
4:56 around a table in the Rue de Coeur at Marseille. But since then, everything has changed in and
5:02 about me. I am accustomed to brave difficulties, and in the conflict to crush those who, by their own free will, or by chance, voluntarily or
5:10 involuntarily, interfere with me in my career. It is generally the case that what we most ardently

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